North Coast Rep plans duet of Pinter plays

In San Diego, actor Richard Baird is best known for his Shakespearean work. While he now lives in Chicago, he served for several years as artistic director of the Poor Players, a San Diego Shakespeare company. So what's he doing in two Harold Pinter one-acts at North Coast Repertory Theatre?

"I'm a huge fan of Pinter," he said. "A lot of plays are well-made plays where we know 'this is the beginning' and 'this is what the character wants.' And it's all wrapped up with a bow by the end. Pinter never does that. You never know what's coming around the corner ---- like in real life.

"Plus the language is a treat to say. It can turn on you in a moment. One minute you're laughing, and then you're scared. That makes for a thrilling evening."

Like Baird, North Coast Rep Artistic Director David Ellenstein is a fan of the Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, whose plays are known for their mysterious characters, unusual plotting and pregnant pauses. So when Ellenstein decided to do an evening of Pinter one acts, he called Baird to join in on the fun. This is his ninth show with the Solana Beach company, including "The Lion in Winter," "Ghosts," "This," "Tempest," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Arcadia." He also won accolades as Cyrano de Bergerac while serving as the artistic director of Southwest Shakespeare Company, a production directed by Ellenstein.

The program consists of "The Lover" and "The Dumb Waiter." "The Lover" is the story of a married couple who play a game: that the man is actually the woman's adulterous lover. But as the evening progresses, not everything is as it seems.

Baird, the only actor cast in both one-acts, plays the milkman in "The Lover."

"I have a very small role," he admitted. "I only have six lines, but they're quite loaded. I took it on because I'm already backstage. And the role has a lot of sentimental value to David because he played the role during his early years as an actor."

The second one-act, "The Dumb Waiter," is much darker. In it, two hit men are waiting in a basement for their mark. Their only contact with the world outside their subterranean stage is through the dumb waiter (the small elevator-type device used to ferry small objects between floors). Baird plays Gus, a Cockney hit man.

"It reminds me of 'Waiting for Godot' or Abbott and Costello," he said. "There's a wonderful vaudeville quality to it, a comedy of errors ---- but at the same time it's scary, because we know they kill people. However, we get a sense of pathos because we know they're just doing it on someone else's orders."

Baird believes that Pinter, not unlike Shakespeare, has gotten a bad rap for being scholarly and inaccessible. He sees productions like this as an opportunity to open audience members' eyes.

"Pinter has a reputation for being bleak and boring," he noted. "But these plays are funny and thrilling. They both deal with sex and death. These plays still have the power to frighten and entertain us after all this time. That's why they don't feel dated at all."